Held in Frame is a collection of four solo performances done throughout 2009 with the Bugbrand AudioWeevil08. Some time last year, a bunch of threads coalesced into the idea to explore the AudioWeevil as a solo instrument: I had been listening to blindoldfreak’s Buchla-centric album 1 a lot, and was both intrigued by its focus on a single instrument and filled with modular-envy (which I’ve since quelled by starting a Euro modular system); a post about noise synths (a general term encompassing a whole bunch of DIY/small-run tabletop-sized synthesizers often based around 555 chips or CMOS hex inverters for oscillators) over at the 12k forum in which someone asked about using these devices for subtle musical applications; and I took up playing the ukulele and was drawn to the notion of folk music in its most general sense, just idling at home and strumming out tunes for the simple pleasure of playing.

So that’s what these are, an attempt at a folk music that is defined by the instrument and the player rather than any commonly-held definition of folk music. The recordings are all presented in mono, in keeping with the intended simplicity of the presentation. The Audioweevil is the primary sound source, run through a few effects pedals (I think the only three I used at various points here are the Boss PS-5 pitch shifter, the Catalinbread Semaphore Tremolo, and the Malekko E600D bucket-brigade delay). I used the Trogotronic 666 as accompaniment on the final track (it’s making that zippering sound).

A slightly different version of the first track, February 19 2009, first appeared last year on a compilation put out by my friend Mark over at the Just Not Normal netlabel (that version was processed to be stereo-ish, to better sit within the context of a diverse compilation). This release is streamable or downloadable from Bandcamp, in any format you’d like, including lossless audio files.